Two factions of Daleks arrive on 1963 Earth via a time corridor. They are
in search of the Hand of Omega, a powerful and ancient Gallifreyan stellar
manipulator the Doctor was hiding prior to his first inadvertent trip with
Ian and Barbara. With the help of the British army, it is up to the Doctor
and Ace to defeat both of the warring Dalek factions, even as the Daleks'
human allies infiltrate their party.

Production

By 1987, Ben Aaronovitch had spent almost half a decade trying to break
into television scriptwriting. One of his submissions caught the eye of
BBC script editor Caroline Oulton, who suggested two programmes for which
Aaronovitch's talents might be suitable: a police drama called
Rockliffe's Babies and Doctor Who. Rockliffe's Babies
was then in the process of winding down its two-season run, but
Aaronovitch had more luck with Doctor Who. In May, he submitted an
idea called “Knight Fall” to script editor Andrew Cartmel.
Cartmel didn't think “Knight Fall” itself was appropriate for
the programme, but met with Aaronovitch and encouraged him to try
again.

In June, Aaronovitch worked on a proposal entitled “Transit”,
and by the end of the summer he was making better headway with
“Storm Over Avallion”, inspired by the legends of King
Arthur. Around the same time, in late August, the BBC confirmed to
producer John Nathan-Turner that Doctor Who would continue into
its twenty-fifth season. Sensitive to the expectations of such a
milestone year, Nathan-Turner wanted to start the season off with a
major attraction, and soon settled on bringing back the Daleks, who had
last been seen in Season Twenty-Two's Revelation Of
The Daleks. On October 9th, the production office began formally
securing permission to use the Daleks from their creator, Terry
Nation.

Andrew Cartmel wanted to address the loss of the Doctor's
mystery by hinting that there was more to his background than had been
revealed

Although “Storm Over Avallion” had not yet been formally
commissioned, the production team had seen enough of it to observe that
Aaronovitch had a flair for the kind of fast-paced action they wanted for
the new Dalek story. As such, Aaronovitch was asked to cease work on the
Arthurian tale and instead begin devising the Season Twenty-Five
premiere. (“Storm Over Avallion” would later be resurrected
as Battlefield in 1989.) In addition to
pitting the Doctor against his oldest enemies, Nathan-Turner and Cartmel
wanted this adventure to begin addressing a concern they shared that
Doctor Who had lost some of its sense of wonder, and that the
Doctor himself was no longer a very mysterious figure. Cartmel, in
particular, wanted to start laying hints that there was more to the
Doctor's background than had heretofore been revealed. This was greeted
enthusiastically by star Sylvester McCoy, who himself had finally had
time to think more thoroughly about his portrayal of the Doctor (after
being cast almost at the last minute prior to the start of production on
Season Twenty-Four) and wanted to invest the character with a greater
sense of darkness and moodiness.

On October 30th, Aaronovitch was commissioned to write the first episode
of his Dalek adventure under the title “Nemesis Of The
Doctor”. At this point, it was planned to be the third story into
production for Season Twenty-Five, and was designated Serial 7K.
Aaronovitch decided to tie his story directly to the very first
Doctor Who serial, 100,000 BC -- and
particularly its first episode, An Unearthly Child -- by
revealing just what the Doctor was doing in 1963 London. Subsequently,
however, it was pointed out that the Season Twenty-Two story Attack Of The Cybermen had also revisited the
setting of An Unearthly Child (albeit in 1985), prompting
Aaronovitch to scale back some of his references.

Aaronovitch also drew on the idea put forward in Revelation Of The Daleks that there had been a
schism in the Dalek ranks. Consequently, he included two Dalek factions
-- the “Red Daleks” led by the Emperor Dalek and the
“Blue Daleks” led by the Black Dalek. Observing that Terry
Nation had always intended the Daleks to be a metaphor for the Nazis,
Aaronovitch drew upon the burgeoning racist and fascist sentiment in
early-Sixties England; he was keen that his story not present an overly
romanticised depiction of the period. He also considered making use of
other elements of Dalek continuity -- including the peaceful Thals who
shared the Daleks' homeworld of Skaro, and the Daleks' brutish servants
the Ogrons -- but eventually rejected these for fear of overcomplicating
the story.

Ben Aaronovitch considered using other elements of Dalek
continuity, such as the Thals and the Ogrons

Finally, Cartmel encouraged Aaronovitch to make substantial use Ace, as
part of a broader plan to give the character more exposure than many
past companions. Sophie Aldred's option for Season Twenty-Five was
officially taken up on December 1st, although she and Nathan-Turner had
agreed to her continued association with Doctor Who while making
her debut story, Dragonfire, in August.
McCoy's contract had already been renewed back on November 19th.

The last three episodes of “Nemesis Of The Doctor” were
commissioned on December 18th. The Time Lord device was briefly called the
Hand of Rassilon before swapping ancient Gallifreyan pioneers and
becoming the Hand of Omega. The head of the Association was Mr Gummer,
while Rachel's surname was Israel instead of Jensen. The Special Weapons
Dalek was part of the Black Dalek's Renegade forces, whereas the
Imperial Daleks made use of a floating assault platform. In part four,
the Black Dalek had nuclear charges attached to the Hand as a safeguard
against an attack by the Emperor's forces, only for the Doctor to
commune with the Hand and induce it to disarm the explosives. In the
story's closing moments, the Doctor killed the Black Dalek with a
handheld weapon generated by the Hand -- referred to as a Novagun or the
“Finger of Omega” -- in a scene intended as a parody of the
quick-draw tradition in Hollywood westerns.

One notion which had evolved out of the regular discussions between
Cartmel and his team of prospective writers for Season Twenty-Five was
the idea that Doctor Who is set in a universe where some of our
fictional characters are actually real (much like the Doctor himself). To
this end, Aaronovitch included references to Professor Bernard Quatermass
and his British Rocket Group, created by Nigel Kneale for the BBC's
science-fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment in 1953 and
revived in two sequels. (Near the end of the story, he also intended to
allude to the replacement of Gilmore's Countermeasure Unit with the
United Nations Intelligence Taskforce led by Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart.) The same concept inspired the episode two scene in
which a BBC continuity announcer refers to the imminent broadcast of an
episode of a new science-fiction series -- the intent being that this
would be the Doctor Who universe parallel of Doctor Who
itself.

Ben Aaronovitch had been skeptical of using Davros, whom
he felt tended to overshadow the Daleks

As Aaronovitch completed work on his first draft, he happened to speak
with visual effects assistant Mike Tucker. A Doctor Who fan,
Tucker mentioned that he had always wanted to build a domed Emperor
Dalek prop -- akin to the version depicted in the Dalek comic strip
published in the pages of TV Century 21 in the mid-Sixties --
which would split open to reveal the Daleks's creator, Davros, inside.
Aaronovitch had been skeptical of using Davros, whom he felt tended to
overshadow the Daleks and reduce them to mere henchmen, but now seized
upon Tucker's idea for the serial's climax. Unfortunately, after
receiving Aaronovitch's draft scripts in January 1988, Nation responded
to object to “Nemesis Of The Doctor”, and the minimal role
played by Davros in particular. Happily, Nathan-Turner was able to
assuage Nation's concerns, and his agents gave the project their formal
approval on February 16th.

By now, it had been decided that the Dalek story would be first in the
production queue for Season Twenty-Five, designated Serial 7H, and
directed by Andrew Morgan who had also made Time
And The Rani. Aaronovitch continued to work on his scripts,
especially in light of concerns that they were substantially overlong;
one notable deletion was a lengthy battle sequence in part three as the
Doctor and Ace travel from the builder's yard to Coal Hill School. The
final confrontation with the Black Dalek was also reworked to have the
Doctor talk it into destroying itself, as both McCoy and Morgan felt
that the Doctor's use of a gun was out of character. At this stage,
Gummer became Ratcliffe (to avoid confusion with the name
“Gilmore”), while the serial gained the new title
Remembrance Of The Daleks.

A major task facing visual effects designer Stuart Brisdon was the
accumulation of sufficient Dalek props for Serial 7H. In addition to the
brand-new Emperor Dalek and Special Weapons Dalek casings, there was
also the need for enough Daleks to make up both the Imperial and
Renegade factions. It was decided that the Black Dalek's forces would
consist of six previously-built props (most of them emanating from Revelation Of The Daleks), while the Emperor's
troops were four new constructions. Brisdon was eager to modernise the
Dalek props, but Nathan-Turner was resistant to his proposed changes; the
designer's principal victory was in making the manipulator arm less
obviously akin to a toilet plunger. It had now been decided that the
Daleks' colour scheme should reflect the liveries seen in Revelation Of The Daleks. As such, the Imperial
Daleks would be cream with gold trim (instead of red with black trim)
while the Renegade Daleks would be grey with black trim (instead of blue
with silver trim).

While filming the Dalek battle at Windmill Walk, the
explosions drew the police, who suspected a possible attack by the Irish
Republican Army

The first day of filming for Season Twenty-Five was April 4th. Ratcliffe's
yard was a property on Theed Street in London, while the episode four
battle between the Dalek factions was filmed under a rail bridge at
Windmill Walk. The explosions detonated by the visual effects team drew
the attention of the police, who arrived to investigate the possibility of
an attack by the Irish Republican Army on the nearby Waterloo East
station. Morgan's team returned to both locations, completing the work
at Theed Street on the 5th (when more pyrotechnics were strong enough to
set off car alarms and damage several of the Dalek casings) and at
Windmill Walk on the 6th.

The rest of April 6th and the entirety of the 7th was spent at the Kew
Bridge Steam Museum in Brentford, Middlesex for scenes in and around
Totter's Lane. Originally, it had been hoped that the London Scrapyard
might be used (as in Attack Of The
Cybermen) but there was concern about the proximity of private
residences, given that more large explosions were planned.
Unfortunately, a continuity error occurred at the Museum when a sign
painter printed the name on the scrapyard gate as “L.M.
Forman” instead of “I.M. Foreman”. Although the
leading 'L' was easily changed to an 'I', the missing 'e' could not be
corrected in time for recording. April 8th was a busy day, with Morgan's
team working in several different London venues. In addition to several
street scenes, the graveyard was Willesden Lane Cemetery, while
establishing shots were taken for the Army HQ at TA Hall and the funeral
parlour at John Nodes Funeral Services.

Finally, from April 9th to the 13th (omitting only the 10th), various
sequences in and around Coal Hill School were filmed at St John's School,
which was between terms, and on the adjacent Macbeth Street. For the
scene where Ace wields her souped-up baseball bat, Aldred inadvertently
damaged a real Dalek casing in the mistaken belief that it was a dummy
prop. On the 12th, McCoy ad-libbed dialogue giving Gilmore's nickname as
“Chunky”. This stemmed from an incident at the Steam Museum
when actor Simon Williams misinterpreted the script's description of his
character's “chunky service revolver” as referring to a
specific type of gun, to the amusement of his castmates. Amongst the
extras posing as Coal Hill students this day were the children of
Williams, Morgan and costume designer Ken Trew, plus the sister of
Jasmine Breaks (who was playing the little girl who turns out to be
integrated with the Dalek Battle Computer).

Terry Molloy was unavailable to voice the Dalek Battle
Computer, so John Leeson agreed to provide a Davros-like performance

With so many scenes recorded on location, Remembrance Of The Daleks
was allocated just a single three-day studio block, beginning on
Wednesday, April 27th in BBC Television Centre Studio 8. First, though,
the various voices for the serial were recorded. Terry Molloy was already
booked to make his on-screen return as Davros (a role he had already
played in Resurrection Of The Daleks and Revelation Of The Daleks) and it was hoped that
he could also voice the Dalek Battle Computer, to further the pretense
that it was Davros, not the little girl, who was working with the Renegade
Daleks. However, when other commitments prevented Molloy from attending
the recording session, John Leeson (formerly the voice of the Doctor's
robot dog K-9) agreed to provide a Davros-like performance in his
stead.

On the first day in TC8, sets in use included the cafe, the Army HQ, and
the Coal Hill School entrance hall. More material on the latter was
recorded on April 18th, as well as Mike's living room, the bridge of the
Dalek shuttle, and the school stairwell and cellar. Remaining cellar
scenes were then completed on the 19th, together with those in the
warehouse office, the funeral parlour and the Imperial Dalek mothership,
in which Molloy made his final on-screen appearance as Davros. He
continued to act in various television and radio programmes, including
Tales Of Sherwood Forest, Chalkface and Casualty. He
also reprised the role of Davros for several Doctor Who audio plays
produced by Big Finish Productions, beginning with the appropriately-named
Davros in September 2003.

In spite of the effort to trim Aaronovitch's scripts, the initial edits
of all four episodes substantially overran their twenty-five-minute
timeslots. A notable casualty of this excessive length was Davros
accusing the Doctor of being “merely another Time Lord,” to
which the Doctor responds that he is “far more than just another
Time Lord.” Had it aired, this would have been the first explicit
statement of the new direction in which Cartmel wanted to take the
character. He and Aaronovitch had roughed out ideas about the Doctor
being somehow linked to a shadowy figure from Gallifreyan legend called
“the Other”, who was one of the three pillars of ancient
Time Lord society alongside Rassilon and Omega.

Bob Dylan was a Doctor Who
fan, and allowed the use of Only A Pawn In Their
Game in the opening montage for free

The story's opening montage was originally intended to be longer, but
permission was denied for the inclusion of some of the planned clips,
most notably Queen Elizabeth heralding the construction of the
Trans-Pacific cable on December 2nd, 1963. On the other hand, Bob Dylan
turned out to be such a fan of Doctor Who that he allowed an
excerpt from his protest song Only A Pawn In Their Game to be used
for free. To preserve the surprise of Davros' appearance, on part three
the Emperor Dalek was credited to “Roy Tromelly” -- an anagram
of “Terry Molloy”.

Unfortunately, the ambitious scope of Remembrance Of The Daleks
proved to be more than the Doctor Who budget could bear, incurring
an overspend of more than twelve thousand pounds. As a result, BBC policy
precluded Morgan from returning to the programme; his subsequent
television credits included episodes of Casualty, The Worst
Witch and Heartbeat. Williams, Pamela Salem and Karen
Gledhill returned to the characters of Gilmore, Rachel and Allison in a
series of audio plays from Big Finish Productions entitled
Counter-Measures, first released in July 2012.

For Season Twenty-Five, Doctor Who was shifted to Wednesday
nights from the Monday timeslot allocated to Season Twenty-Four.
However, cast and crew were disappointed to learn that it was still
scheduled opposite the ITV soap opera behemoth Coronation Street.
While this strategy had originally been described as a
counterprogramming move by the BBC, the low viewing figures for Season
Twenty-Four suggested that younger viewers were being prevented from
watching Doctor Who by their parents, given that many households
still had only a single television.

It was originally thought that the season would begin airing on
September 7th, but coverage of the Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, South
Korea prompted a revision of these plans, with episode one of
Remembrance Of The Daleks finally heralding the start of the
silver anniversary season on October 5th. It also marked a milestone of a
different sort for Doctor Who, as the first episode to be broadcast
with stereo sound -- and, indeed, one of the first such programmes in
Britain.